True-Life Adventure

here dropped it when I tackled him.”
    “Skinny! Look who’s talking,” said Skinny.
    “Shut up, Skinny,” said Booker. To me, he said, “We’ve gotta tie these guys up.”
    “Hey, listen,” said Joe. “We won’t call the cops. I mean, not right away. Just take the file and go and we’ll give you fifteen minutes.”
    “Yeah, you will like my partner’s got a gun,” said Booker. “Take off your shirt.”
    “Take off your shirt,” I said to Joe, dropping one of his wrists to make it possible.
    We sat them in chairs, back to back, and tied them together with their own shirts and belts, poor bastards.
    While Booker was getting the file, I asked Skinny a question: “What tipped you off my partner wasn’t sent by Dr. Rumler?”
    “The pronoun,” he said.
    “Huh?”
    “Rumler’s a woman.”

CHAPTER 18
    We stopped at a phone booth a few blocks away, called the hospital, and told them to check their librarians. It was the least we could do— to this day I feel bad about tying those guys up and wrecking their library.
    Then we went to Booker’s place and looked at the file. It was the first time I’d been in his apartment and all I can say is, the burgling business must be good. Booker has one of the more impressive art collections I have seen in a private home. Anyway, we looked at the file.
    It said Dr. Rumler had seen Terry on the Saturday before she disappeared. Saturday. The day docs play tennis and sail their sloops. I checked to see if Rumler had seen Terry on other Saturdays. She hadn’t. Which meant, I thought, that Lindsay had convinced her it was an emergency. That fit with Jacob’s saying he and Lindsay had talked about his treatments the last time Lindsay brought Terry back. I figured what happened was that Terry had mentioned the treatments and Lindsay had taken her to Rumler to have her checked out.
    As far as I could make out from the file, she was in remission— but she was going blind. And that wasn’t all. She was jaundiced. It looked as if Jacob’s bomb wasn’t as smart as he thought. The doctor had noted “poss. side effs.”
    I figured Jacob had lied to me. Lindsay must have done a good deal more than ask him a lot of questions about his treatments. She’d probably told him to stop them.
    And he must have refused and that was why she snatched the kid. She was afraid the treatments were actually hurting Terry, that they were causing her to go blind and destroying her liver. She was afraid Jacob was so wrought up about Terry that he’d lost his judgment— couldn’t tell if something was bad for her or not; wanted to think he could cure her and wouldn’t look at the facts or listen to anybody else. That must have been what went through her mind when she made the snatch.
    But where the hell had she taken the kid? I didn’t have a clue.
    I took myself home and to bed. By home, I mean to Sardis’s, and by bed, I mean the sofa. I didn’t think about where I was going to sleep; I just sort of automatically went to the sofa. For some reason I didn’t feel like sleeping with Sardis.
    It didn’t occur to me to wonder what the reason might be until I was just drifting off. I had some passing sort of erotic fantasy and remembered we’d been having a terrific time together. In bed especially. So why the hell did I suddenly out of the clear blue not feel like sleeping with her? It struck me as odd. She’d probably been disappointing me in some way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. She’d acted possessive before I went out— maybe that was it.
    It must be. I was feeling crowded or something. Or she wasn’t going to work out and I was starting to see it. That’s just the way things are sometimes.
    The smell of coffee woke me up. I went in the kitchen to get some, but Sardis hadn’t made enough for me. She said she didn’t know how long I wanted to sleep. She didn’t say much else, and neither did I.
    I made my own coffee while she read the Chronicle, the business section. Then I remembered I had a story in the paper, for the first time in two years. I picked up the front section to find Jacob and Marilyn staring at me from page 1. My very own byline lent authority to a story headlined: BIZARRE KIDNAP CASE— NOBEL LAUREATE AND TV PERSONALITY . I was actually excited, just like I used to be when I had a page 1 story. Journalism’s a dirty job and all that, but it has its cheap little thrills.
    “Hey, Sardis,” I said, “did you see my story?”
    She nodded.